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No more 'Yes, but ...'

His Indianapolis Colts are soft, an arena-league team that couldn't handle the Bears in the Great Outdoors.

Blacks aren't cut out to be coaches.

So much for stereotypes.

"The Indianapolis Colts smashed every stereotype Sunday evening," wrote Phil Richards of the Indianapolis Star, after the team's 29-17 Super Bowl win Sunday.

One other stereotype may also deserve smashing: the conventional wisdom, swallowed by most football experts like so much Kool-Aid, that defense wins championships.

Maybe, maybe not. All we know is that in 41 years of Super Bowls, there have been 41 Most Valuable Players - and 33 of them have come from the offensive side of the ball, 21 of them quarterbacks. Only seven have been defensive players.

And when you look at the list of winning Super Bowl quarterbacks, it's clear that having a guy named Elway or Montana or Starr or Namath or Favre or Brady or Manning is the surest way to win a National Football League crown.

We couldn't be happier for Colts coach Tony Dungy, who, along with Bears coach Lovie Smith, guaranteed that this year a black coach would win the Super Bowl for the first time.

As for Peyton Manning, how can you not love this guy? A favorite national pitchman - despite toiling in the relative media obscurity of Indianapolis - Manning's pedigree (NFL quarterback father), work ethic and leadership have made him one of the sport's all-time greats. He's creeping up the record charts in most passing categories, and already owns the season touchdown record of 49. No one doubts he's already a Hall of Famer, and he's nowhere near finished.

Even so, Manning's failure to reach the Super Bowl until this year had been considered by some to be a blot on his resume - and losing Sunday's game would have only given his yapping critics unwarranted credence.